


Obviously

by Rorqual



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: F/F, Fluff, also Raven is there for 20 seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rorqual/pseuds/Rorqual
Summary: When the party breaks for camp, Rita wants two things: to be able to read a new book and to be able to find a way to finish her recurring thoughts about what Estellewas. Coincidentally, the two overlap.





	Obviously

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like this pairing so I wanted to try writing a thing for it. 
> 
> I intended for this to be read as taking place mid game and pre-Baction for some interactions to make sense, but there's no concrete time frame for it.

Setting up camp and eating under the stars had long since become the new normal for Rita, as much as the idea of a group meal, let alone one outdoors, would have once seemed totally alien to her. For as much as spending time with everyone had also gradually transitioned from _tolerable annoyance_ to something she genuinely enjoyed, even if she might not actually admit it aloud, she still appreciated those moments of solidarity. That evening, she'd distanced herself from the others until it was time to eat and cracked open the new book she'd picked up the last time they were in town. A book she'd barely made pages into before Raven had seemingly popped up out of nowhere behind her, almost feeling like he'd popped up out of her shadow.

"Whatcha readin', Rita darlin'?" His question didn't register quite as much as the nickname did. She'd once thought that Yuri had been kind of obnoxious when they'd first met, with his tendency of giving her _those_ infuriating looks which had always proceeded him teasing her in a way she still wasn't really fully equipped to deal with, but the old man had proven to her that it was possible to take the potential for obnoxiousness to new and untapped heights. He was almost impressively carefree, seemingly so comfortable in that laid-back nature of his, but that was another thing to never actually tell anyone.

She looked over to him and stated, with the flattest tone she could muster, "Don't call me that."

"Ooh!" He mimed rubbing his arms, as though caught in a chill, and one of those feigned expressions of being deeply wounded by her words. "Ice cold!"

Rita just fixed him her hardest _go away or you and this book are gonna get well-acquainted_ look because she wouldn't be able to give reading her full attention with him hovering around. There was that brief moment where he looked like he was holding back a laugh at her expense while she further furrowed her brow at him in a way as though daring him to do so, watching as he threw his arms behind his head and wandered off again. For as much as he also felt like he fit into the weird little friendship group that Brave Vesperia and their companions had turned into, a part of her still had to wonder what Raven got up to when she wasn't there to encourage him to stay in line. She knew it wasn't like he could get up to too much trouble, grounded in their little camp-out just like the rest of them but he could have gone to stick his nose into somebody else's business.

She'd turned back to her book but still didn't feel ready to read it because, as she thought on the idea of an unsupervised Raven, she realized he could be pestering Estelle. He probably wasn't, but _could_ be and, if he was, she'd totally have to get up and do something about it. Estelle was far too polite to tell him when he was being too much because she was too good-natured and just far too _nice_. 

Rita definitely didn't want to have to come to Estelle's rescue, because she didn't want her being put in a situation where she needed any kind of help in the first place. She just thought that, if Estelle ever did need someone, she wanted to be the one to help her. Even something as small as this, that she might be being anything less than totally relaxed in their downtime, just followed that same logic, that was because Estelle was...

...a sentence that she'd found impossible to finish in recent months because, as she lifted her fingers to her cheeks and felt the familiar warmth in her skin, it had turned out that thinking about her tended to make her blush. It'd hardly been the first time she'd felt herself getting flustered like this over the princess, finding the colour rush to her face almost every time she'd stopped to try to really think about what Estelle was to her.

She tried again, trying to put her thoughts in some kind of order. Two words made for one unfinished thought: _Estelle was..._

"Rita!"

...calling her name and, by the sound of her voice, wasn't that far behind her. These back-to-back attempts of people getting almost entirely in Rita's blind spot were really proving a point about how turning her back to everyone had its downsides, so she turned her head to watch her approach, more than a little conscious of how pink her cheeks must have been.

"Hey, Estelle."

"Oh!" Estelle exclaimed as Rita looked at her. "It looks like the sun really got you!"

The statement didn't surprise her, because Rita had completely been expecting for Estelle to ask why she was so red in the face given that she was incredibly sure that she'd turned roughly the same colour as her clothes. Hardly the kind of subtle thing that was easy to miss. This definitely wasn't the angle she'd been expecting the question about her redness to come from, awkwardly curling a hand into the fabric of her tunic as she answered, "Yeah, I guess so."

"If you're burned, let me know, okay?" Estelle gave her one of those warm, wide smiles and Rita wondered if she knew that she practically dimpled when she grinned. "I can heal you."

"It's nothing, really. You shouldn't waste your artes on a sunburn, anyway."

"But you'd be uncomfortable if you had one!" Estelle continued, persistent, as though that totally justified spending her time and energy curing something that didn't need any kind of intervention. It wasn't like the frequent cuts and bites they'd get from fights, where she actually would have to tend to their wounds. "I'd want to help you."

"I'll let you know, then." There wasn't really anything else Rita could offer in the face of such insistence, except her own smile that felt shakier than it should have been. Estelle really liked to fuss over her and it was always good to know the princess cared about her. She cared about everyone though, obviously. "Thanks, Estelle."

"I really hope you don't get burned, thou – oh! You were reading!" Estelle gestured to the open book on Rita's lap as she spoke and added, all genuine apologies, "I'm sorry if I interrupted you."

They might have been wildly different people in terms of their personalities, but they definitely had something in common as far as reading went: it had become obvious incredibly early into their travels together that her Highness absolutely _adored_ books, although the overlap between the things the two girls had both read had turned out to be a big fat zero. Estelle had once asked her if she'd read a book by an apparently popular author and Rita had just looked at her blankly, wondering if it was the kind of thing she should have heard of and having nothing to offer her except a shrug.

Regardless of whether she 'should have' known about the book or not, Estelle hadn't seemed to mind, simply telling her " _you'll have to come to the capital with me so I can lend it to you!"_. Rita was pretty sure she'd managed a thanks in response because she remembered that Estelle had clasped her hands together and smiled – no, beamed - at her. She had just been offering her a book, it was hardly the kind of the thing she needed to get worked up over nor the kind of thing she needed to enthusiastically tell her she was _"really looking forward to"_.

Hardly the kind of thing for either of them to get worked up over in their own ways, as it turned out. It hadn't gone unnoticed to Rita that Estelle didn't offer her own books to the others. For someone who was a total bibliophile, books must have been as precious to Estelle as blastia was to her. It had to mean something to offer something out of her own collection to someone, didn't it?

Obviously, it didn't have to mean anything, because who else was she supposed to lend a book to? She couldn't imagine anyone else in their group being wildly into reading, except maybe a solid cookbook in Yuri's case and even that idea had felt like a total stretch. For pretty much everyone else, gifting them a book would be the kind of gesture that would probably have better luck being appreciated by Repede, who'd at least be interested in chewing or burying it or...whatever it was dogs did with books.

Yeah. It definitely didn't mean anything that she'd wanted to share something with her and nobody else.

Estelle had sat down while she'd been lost in thought, making Rita dimly aware that she'd totally failed to give her any kind of response about whether or not she'd been interrupted. When she'd sit like that, with her legs tucked up close to her, it made her dress billow out around her in a way that reminded her of flower petals, just like those really vibrant ones that had grown all over Halure's tree.

With the other girl sat beside her and looking at her curiously, a common expression as far Estelle went, Rita was hit with another one of those ' _Estelle was...'_ thoughts. The princess was just, objectively, really _pretty_ and made her feel just so...fluttery inside when she looked at her. She was also taking Rita's unintentional ignorance with characteristic good cheer, pushing on through their conversation despite the lack of response.

"What's your book about, Rita?"

"Huh? It's..." Rita turned the book over to illustrate her point, revealing the kind of unassuming cover that bordered on bland, simple leather binding the pages and the title printed across the front in neat black writing. " _Applications of blastia for magecraft_."

With the vast amount of potential applications a person could get out of even the most basic understanding of blastia – they were truly incredible things, all built for clear purposes and simple to understand once their functions were understood – it certainly wasn't a short book by anybody's standards, definitely not the kind of thing most people would consider 'light reading'. Rita hadn't actually been getting a lot out of it that she didn't already know and, judging by the contents pages she'd skimmed through, the rest of the book looked like it was full of the same kind of level of content. At least the author's writing was pretty concise, even if they were covering some pretty introductory stuff.

"That sounds complicated," Estelle said, looking at her with...not quite a frown, not quite a pout, but it was that intense look she got when she was going to really, seriously concentrate on something. It was determination, perhaps, and it was also strangely appealing. Rita was definitely conscious of her face prickling with warmth, wondering if the sensation had actually even stopped at all, and it was getting increasingly tempting to just douse herself with a well-aimed _Champagne_. "Do you mind if I look?"

"If you want to. It's not that difficult, though. I mean..." What _did_ she mean? Rita wasn't trying to imply Estelle was dumb, although she was pretty sure it could be taken that way. Everything in the book was just... science, which felt as second nature to her as breathing. With blastia, X always meant X, and combining X with Y would always make Z. Straightforward and easy. Nothing like noticing that her heart was beating that little bit faster when Estelle had shuffled a tiny bit closer to peer at the book for herself and the complications in trying to work out what the best way for her to react to that was. She just knew it was the kind of feeling that made her want to move closer as well, so she did. "I've just seen a lot of this before."

"You have? I don't think I know this one." Estelle touched a finger to one of the diagrams to illustrate, briefly brushing Rita's arm with hers as she did. "You really do know so much, Rita. It's incredible."

"N-not really. These are just pretty common formula and you'd know them too if you needed to use blastia."

"They're common?" Estelle had repeated and before Rita could give her the hasty justification of _you wouldn't know that if you weren't looking for them!_ and that she wasn't really trying to suggest anything by saying that, Estelle gave her one of those imploring looks as she continued to speak. "Would you show me what they mean?"

Although _but_ _you won't get any use out of them_ and _why do you want to know so badly?_ came to mind for Rita, those blue-green eyes looking at her put a third, final thought in place. Estelle wanted _her_ to show her something, so she'd oblige her. To say nothing of just how incredibly close they were, sat together like this, or the fact that if Estelle wanted her to talk her through parts of a decently lengthy book then that would mean she'd probably stay at her side until dinner.

There was obviously only one answer.

"Sure, if you want me to."

Estelle clearly did, resting her hands on her legs and leaning close ( _just to see the book, obviously,_ even if Estelle did keep glancing over to her and not the pages, eager and expectant to learn – or maybe just to listen her?) as she talked her through the introduction to blastia in relation to spell-casting. For someone who'd said it sounded 'complicated', Estelle had turned out to already be familiar with some of the concepts already and Rita guessed it must have been covered in her undoubtedly very comprehensive schooling. Even if it wasn't directly applicable to Estelle, it had probably been decided that it'd be a good thing to try and raise a well-rounded princess.

"Oh! If this one means 'fire'..." Estelle's face lit up in recognition as she leaned over to point at another page. As she did, their arms would brush again and Estelle gave her one of those pleased smiles as they touched. "...in this context, you'd be able to boil something."

"Yeah, it does. You'd easily know all of this if you'd ever needed to."

They carried on, Estelle continuing to be enthused at every correct interpretation she made and graduating to the more nuanced applications with a smooth kind of ease. "It's like reading part of a story!" She'd explained when Rita had pointed out she picked up on things really quickly and, although Rita had never really thought of it that way, she could agree that it was more or less accurate: all the aspects of a formula just came together to form a greater whole out of smaller parts. The few times she'd had to give more detail about the less obvious concepts, Estelle had looked at her like she'd hung on every word. With how happy she looked just to be there, those earlier unfinished thoughts of _Estelle was..._ came back to her head.

The easiest way to finish that thought was that Estelle was a princess. A princess, but she was neither a timid wallflower nor haughtily snobbish in the way she'd believed all the nobility must have been. She'd ever had ever actually had any experiences with the empire's royal family before she'd left Aspio, but it'd been easy to extrapolate how the absolute peak of upper-class society must have been like from her infrequent visits from the knights. They'd always turned to bluntly inform her (never to _ask_ her, not until Flynn had shown up and at least given her the novelty of letting her decline his request for assistance) that her work was needed as part of her _obligations as part of working in an imperial blastia laboratory._ How those people had been able to outright demand her help, while seemingly dismissing her relevance immediately upon actually seeing who "Mordio, the genius mage" actually was, had been entirely beyond her understanding, but it'd given her nothing but sour experiences.

Estelle was nothing like she'd expected her to be. She'd been the first person to really try and offer her friendship, who'd kept stubbornly trying even though Rita's initial hands-off approach to her, as she'd once thought of it, very clearly working relationship with Yuri Lowell and his various 'acquaintances'. Estelle was driven to a fault, chasing after things that would put her in danger because she worried about others or needed to understand the world around her for the benefit of those around her. She was incredibly kind too, almost to the point of naivety, always the first to offer a helping hand to those who needed it with no consideration for the price it might cost her, or cost them all if that same kindness and trust ever got her seriously hurt.

Estelle was so many things, but there was one surprisingly easy way to finish that sentence that she'd been overlooking. Estelle was someone she really, really liked. Rita had never thought she'd ever be able to think that about anyone, never really wanted to think that about anyone either, but thinking things like that about Estelle felt good. Embarrassing at times, sure, but _good._

The interruption of "food's ready" actually felt terribly unwanted, even with the beginnings of the dull growling in her gut. Despite the implied suggestion that they come to dinner sooner rather than later – they had plenty of mouths to feed, after all, and some of those mouths moved quicker than others as far as second helpings went - neither of them moved.

"We should probably..." Estelle started, the tone of disappointment clear in her voice.

"Yeah, we should." Rita agreed, then paused, glancing down at the page and offered the excuse to stay a little longer. "I think we're almost done with this chapter, though."

"Oh! Then let's finish it!"

It was obviously always good to make sure they brushed up on the basics, even if it was something Rita knew by heart and Estelle didn't need to know these things at all thanks to that power of hers. Everything they were reading was probably unnecessary for both of them, but it was good to be familiar with this kind of stuff...and it definitely felt good for Rita to spend time with someone that cared so much about.

When they reached the conclusion of the chapter, Estelle stood first and reached out a hand to help Rita up. She tucked the book under her arm and accepted the offer after a brief moment of hesitation, letting Estelle pull her up, clasping hands for a brief moment as she helped her stand. Another thing neither of them seemed willing to do, the idea of letting go of each other.

"Um. Rita?" Estelle glanced at her, cheeks flushed with colour in the same way Rita's had been earlier but she was certain Estelle looked so much prettier doing it. "I really like spending time with you."

"Yeah, I'd..." Rita didn't know what to say - _"I'd really like that too"_ or " _I_ _'d just really like to hold your hand again"_ were both accurate, but felt such incredibly personal thoughts that she just didn't know how to move those words from her head to her mouth. A rare moment of truly being at a total loss for something to say, so she squeezed Estelle's hand and chanced a look at her when she did. She was still as pink as her hair and still looked so happy, her gloved hand so warm in hers. "We can read together whenever you want, or we could..."

"We could do anything. Just..." Estelle started, the sudden difficulty Rita was having with speaking must have been apparent to her. Images of the next time they reappeared in town came to mind: she could suggest they go shopping, or they could just take the time for a walk, or they could just sit companionably while they both read - or Estelle could even write. They could do any of those things, but it wouldn't really matter because the things they'd do wasn't the important part. Estelle's own train of thought had overlapped with hers as she spoke again,"...as long as we're together." 

For as much as Rita was struggling with her words in the moment, it'd at least given her another possible way to work towards finishing that thought of what Estelle _was._ She hoped she'd one day, after more of these moments together, that the obvious conclusion to that thought was _Estelle was hers._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
